Образ полицейского в рассказе рубежа XIX-XX вв. (на материале отечественной литературы)

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to determine the specifics of the image of a police officer in Russian short stories at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. The paper identifies and analyses the positive and negative features of law enforcement officers presented in the literature of the said period. Based on the study of literary texts, it is shown that three concepts of a police officer are presented in Russian short stories at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, which are specified by the authors of the paper as the idealising concept, the critical concept and the dialectical one. The research is novel in that it is the first to analyse the image of a police officer not only in the works of famous authors (A. P. Chekhov, L. Andreev, A. Averchenko etc.), but also in the creative work of writers forgotten today (Vs. Popov, L. Horvat, A. Zavistovsky etc.). As a result, it has been proved that the critical concept of a police officer highlighting the main shortcomings of law enforcement officials is the most widely presented one in Russian short stories at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, but it is firmly opposed by the idealising and dialectical concepts depicting police officers as people with both positive and negative qualities. It is emphasised that the identification of the three concepts indicates the versatility of the image of a police officer in Russian literature at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries.